Balisok's body is not here. Indeed, he may not even be dead. But his mother, Marjorie Balisok, is convinced her son, his wife and his step-child died in the horror of the Peoples Temple mass murder-suicide at Jonestown, Guyana, and she ordered the tombstone placed in the family plot.

Mrs. Balisok, a widow and a retired hospital worker, is obsessed by a Life magazine photograph of some of the more than 900 bodies at Jonestown. She believes the photo, which appeared two months after the atrocity, shows her son's body lying next to that of his wife Debbie, and her 5-year-old son, James Kindred.

"I have tried in every way to have my son's body returned to me for burial," she said. "I have insurance policies of all kinds that I cannot cash in until I have a death certificate or a certificate of presumed death."

FBI agent Dick Marx of Huntsville is searching for Balisok for other reasons. Balisok was indicted three years ago by a federal grand jury in Birmingham on a charge of writing bad checks. He never stood trial and left town two weeks before he was indicted. A federal warrant charges him with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. "I'd like to catch this one," Marx said.

Mrs. Balisok is well-known among officials connected to the State Department's Jonestown Task Force. Col. William Cowan, a military pathologist who examined the bodies, said none was "anywhere close" to being Balisok. Cowan said that Mrs. Balisok apparently cannot be convinced of that.

Another Task Force official, Reid Clark, said dental X-rays were taken of all of the bodies at Jonestown. He said he also had the Life photo enlarged 40 times. "I defy anyone to say that's him (Balisok)." Added Clark: "You'd think she'd be thanking us instead of damning us."

Mrs. Balisok said she sent the Task Force an X-ray of her son's hip as well as his dental charts. A steel pin had been placed in one hip to repair an injury from a motorcyle accident, and Mrs. Balisok tried in vain to get officials to perform complete X-rays on the bodies. Clark said many of the bodies were too decomposed to permit such an extensive undertaking.

Last spring, 248 unidentified bodies of cult members were buried in Evergreen Cemetery at Oakland, Calif. At least 20 were adults, and Mrs. Balisok believes Jerry's and Debbie's were among them. Sen. Howell Heflin, D-Ala., wrote to Mrs. Balisok about her son's disappearance:

"Apparently, the State Department and the FBI have investigated your son's case and these agencies are thoroughly convinced that your son never left the United States,"

"That's all they know — nothing," said Mrs. Balisok. She said her son telephoned his lawyer from San Juan, Puerto Rico, a year before the Jonestown incident. She said she found out Jerry and his family had been in the Bahamas when she got an American Express bill for almost $10,000 worth of goods and services her son had charged on her card.

"He was a rotten kid," said American Express Investigator J. Barron Daniel of Atlanta.

Daniel said Balisok disappeared about September 1978, after making the charges in the Bahamas. Before then, Daniel said, he made "a lot of charges at motels and hotels in Miami."

Balisok's attorney, Charles King of Huntsville, said, "For me not to hear from him in any way for this length of time is unusual. He may be in prison in a foreign country, Something has happened to him."

Mrs. Balisok, who also has one older son, said she last saw Jerry in late 1977, She said his troubles stemmed from a time of illness in 1975, when he was severely sunburned during a motorcycle race in Tennessee. He suffered high fevers for weeks after the race and was eventually hospitalized, she said. He never returned to freshman classes at Alabama A&M University.

She said she believes he went to Guyana because "there weren't only cultists there, but fugitives, too." Then, shaking her head over Jerry, she added, "he wasn't much of a person, but he was my son."

Marjorie Balisok places flowers on tombstone for her son (AP photo)
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A Renton man whose first-degree attempted-murder conviction ended one of King County Superior Court's most bizarre trials must be retried because the jury improperly re-enacted his version of the shooting, the state Court of Appeals has ruled.

Jerry Bibb Balisok, 37, whose true identity wasn't known until after his 1990 conviction, was sentenced to 20 years for shooting an alleged conspirator in an arson plot near Tiger Mountain in east King County on Sept. 5, 1989.

King County prosecutors said Balisok lived under the alias of "Ricky Wetta" for 12 years to elude fraud indictments in Alabama. He once performed as a professional wrestler called "Mr. X" and was thought by his mother to be a Jonestown mass-suicide victim.

But Justices William Baker and Faye Kennedy ruled Balisok's trial was prejudiced by the deliberations-room re-enactment of the Tiger Mountain crime. He was unable to rebut what amounted to new evidence discovered in the jury room, they said.

Balisok, who was tried as "John Doe," took the stand but refused to answer questions about his identity.

He said he and Emmett Thompson of Bellevue were target-shooting on Tiger Mountain near Issaquah when Thompson, a much smaller man, jumped him. Balisok, who weighed 300 pounds, admitted shooting Thompson four times in the back of the head but claimed it was self-defense.

He demonstrated for the jury how he and Thompson allegedly wrestled and how the bullets lodged in the back of Thompson's head. The jury did its own re-enactments during its deliberation and concluded Balisok's story was impossible.

Appeals Court Justice Marshall Forrest dissented, saying the re-enactment didn't violate any of the trial judge's instructions and was a good-faith effort to analyze evidence.

Deputy Prosecutor Michael Hogan, who tried the case, said prosecutors will either appeal to the state Supreme Court or hold a new trial for Balisok.

At the 1990 trial, Hogan contended Balisok paid $5,000 for an abandoned Wenatchee hotel, then burned it to collect about $3 million in insurance. Thompson allegedly was a potential witness against him at his federal arson trial. Balisok has since been acquitted of those charges.

King County police Detective Randy Mullinax learned Balisok's real name sometime after the trial and that he had been owner of motorcycle shop in Alabama. He apparently took the assumed name in 1978 when he was indicted on 13 counts of fraud. Balisok apparently was unaware authorities dropped the indictments in 1983 and continued to live under the Wetta alias.

Balisok's mother became convinced he was killed in the Jonestown mass suicide and fought with the federal government because it wouldn't pay her insurance claim without recovery of his body.

His tombstone, resting on the family plot in Huntsville, Ala., read "Damn the State Department."
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An Alabama mother died seven years ago believing that her son, Jerry Balisok, died in the infamous Jonestown Massacre in 1978 in Guyana.

Marjorie Balisok of Huntsville was convinced she recognized her son and his wife, Deborah, from a news photo of the mass suicide of a religious cult in a Guyana jungle settlement in November 1978.

But King County Detective Randy Mullinax yesterday revealed the hoax of Jerry Balisok. He said Balisok was not among the more than 900 people who died in the suicides and slayings led by Jim Jones.

Balisok has been posing as Ricky Wetta, a Renton man convicted last month of attempted first-degree murder, authorities said. Balisok also faces a federal indictment in Yakima for allegedly having a Wenatchee hotel burned down for insurance money.

Mullinax said that, after talking with FBI authorities in Huntsville, he thinks Marjorie Balisok was sincere in her belief and was not a part of the scam.

Balisok, who has no prior convictions, will be sentenced by Superior Court Judge Lloyd Bever on April 2 for attempted murder.

Balisok had gone through the trial as John Doe or Wetta, refusing to reveal his background and several times resorting to Fifth Amendment guarantees against self-incrimination.

Mullinax had learned last September, when "Wetta'' was accused of shooting Emmett Thompson Jr., that the gunman was not Ricky Wetta. The true Ricky A. Wetta lives in Florida.

In 1978, Balisok was operating a motorcycle business in Huntsville. He was indicted on 13 counts of forgery in connection with the business, Hogan said in court papers.

The Balisok family fled Alabama, going first to Miami and then to the Bahamas. Federal authorities issued a fugitive warrant for Balisok.

His mother commissioned a tombstone for Balisok in the family plot in Huntsville.

But Balisok moved to Renton in the late 1970s under the alias.

Balisok worked for The Boeing Co. and was involved in various business transactions as Wetta. While living here, Balisok was fired from one company when the firm learned he had not attended Cambridge University in England, as he had claimed.

In 1983, federal authorities quashed the fugitive warrant and dismissed the Huntsville forgery indictment. Hogan said the Balisoks, who have four children, have been living under the Wetta identity ever since, unaware that those charges had been dropped.

Mullinax said that last September it was determined that in the late 1970s the birth certificate of the real Ricky Wetta was mailed to Renton.

In September, the FBI said it had no fingerprints matching those of the man here believed to be Wetta. But after the conviction last month, Mullinax asked again, and agents hit paydirt.

There is a certain irony in the Balisok case, Mullinax said.

If Balisok had returned for court appearances and settled his debts, his punishment probably would have been only probation, Mullinax said.

When his mother died in 1983, FBI agents put a surveillance on her funeral, "hoping that he would show up. He did not."
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A Renton man who used a false identity for years to avoid criminal charges in Alabama yesterday was sentenced to 20 years in prison for trying to kill a Bellevue man near Tiger Mountain.

No mention was made of Jerry Bibb Balisok's lengthy charade as Rick A. Wetta when King County Superior Court Judge Lloyd Bever imposed the exceptional sentence for the crime of attempted first-degree murder.

Bever said the longer-than-usual punishment was justified because when Balisok opened fire on 22-year-old Emmett Thompson Sept. 5 he was attempting to remove a potential witness in a case involving the torching of a hotel in Wenatchee.

Wetta was indicted by a federal grand jury in Yakima for his alleged involvement in the 1988 arson of an abandoned hotel to collect insurance.

The judge yesterday said there were substantial and compelling reasons to go beyond the standard range of 11 to 15 years.

Deputy Prosecutor Michael Hogan had asked for 30 years for Balisok because of the seriousness of attempting to do away with a witness.

Thompson was a former business partner of Balisok who found religion and sought to remove himself from what authorities said was the plan to share millions in insurance.

The shooting occurred when the two were finishing target practice.

Defense attorney Anne Engelhard argued that the injuries to Thompson were not severe and that there was no elaborate premeditation to dispose of a body.

Engelhard said that if Balisok were planning a cover-up he could have shot and killed Thompson earlier when the two were deep in the woods near Issaquah.

Balisok's mother had thought her son and his wife died in the Jonestown Massacre in Guyana in 1978. The mother had placed on the son's tombstone in the family plot in Huntsville the words, "Damn the State Department."

The inscription reflected her unsuccessful attempt to gain government clearance on the supposed death of Balisok in order to collect life insurance, authorities believed.

Balisok went throughout the trial under the names of Wetta and John Doe. His true identity came to light through the persistence of King County Detective Randy Mullinax, who would not give up efforts to find out more about the mystery man.

Mullinax finally learned that Balisok, 34, was really a former motorcyle-shop owner who fled Alabama after being indicted in that state in 1978 on 13 counts of forgery.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Kresse, in Yakima, said he will confer with King County authorities and other federal officials to determine whether the charges of conspiracy to commit arson will go forward.
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September 9, 2009, The History Press, Wicked North Alabama, by Jacquelyn Procter Reeves, pages 102-105,